3 Big Reasons Why Systems Fail Part 2
3. Keep it simple.
Yes, this is one of those cheesy phrases that gets thrown out at every management conference and business help book. However, there is method to the madness. I know it's not polite to talk about competitors, but from an objective point of view, I have seen other software packages out there, and, even with me being in this industry and being a programmer, I battle to gather clock and hours data. I've heard the same from many others.
Some clients ask us if we have 'fancy feature X' and we often say that we used to but we removed it. We noticed over time that the fancy stuff doesn't get used at the ground level. A lot of ideas sound good around the boardroom table, but that doesn't mean that are practical day to day.
We purposefully simplified our software. Yes, you aren't getting all the bells and whistles, but what you are getting, you are able to use. More importantly, you can get value from it without investing much time. Often getting 80% of what you want is enough (and it's certainly more than 0%). The extra 20% will probably cost you about as much time as the initial 80%. Keep it simple.
